Vehicles such as mine skips generally travel along vertically mounted tracks within mine shafts. The skips are raised and lowered by means of steel wire ropes wound onto rotatable drums. Any failure of a wire rope is generally fatal to the occupants unless some means of timeously restraining it is provided.
Electrically powered systems are generally considered unsatisfactory for this purpose since any power supply cable must generally be wound and unwound in unison with the wire rope by which the skip is suspended. Furthermore electrical cables are likely to be severed at roughly the same time when a wire rope fails, thereby rendering any safety equipment associated with the cables inoperative.
The present invention seeks to address these shortcomings.